Today we remember Jim Harrison, author, poet, and bon vivant. Jim was a friend of Kermit’s in addition to sharing an appreciation for fine wines such as Domaine Tempier and Domaine La Tour Vieille. He was also an occasional contributor to our newsletter—his essay below was first published in March 2007.

Please join us in raising a glass to Jim tonight as we celebrate the passion and insight he brought to our world.

Jim Harrison1937 – 2016

Photo courtesy of the NY Times

The Spirit of Wineby Jim Harrison

I have long since publicly admitted that I seek spirituality through food and wine. In France, Italy, and Spain, I seem more drawn to markets and cafés than to churches and museums. Too many portraits of bleeding Jesus and his lachrymose Momma make me thirsty. The Lord himself said on the cross, “I thirst” and since our world itself has become a ubiquitous and prolonged crucifixion it is altogether logical that we are thirsty.

Yesterday afternoon I was far up a canyon near the Mexican border trying to shoot a few doves to roast when I came upon a calf who was willing to be petted, perhaps because she had no previous contact with brutish humans. While scratching her pretty ears I segued to a tangled group of emotions toward wine. Why does Bordeaux make me feel Catholic, crisp and confident, an illusion indeed; while Burgundy causes an itchy, sexy, somnolent mood? With my day-to-day Côtes du Rhône I am a working writer with vaguely elevated thoughts of my responsibilities, but also with my mind’s eye on a plumpish waitress at a local Mexican restaurant.

Heading back down the canyon with the calf following me, I recalled some splendid wines I had drunk at a private home in Malibu during my manic days in Hollywood. The collector’s house red was a 1961 Lafite, a pleasant substitute for a pre-dinner martini. I was in the kitchen one evening preparing dinner and drinking a bottle of Romanée-Conti from the fifties when a fashion model asked, “How can you drink that shit. It makes me dizzy.” She properly mistook me for a servant and asked for a “Jack and coke” (Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola), surely an inscrutable drink, but then so is taste in general. On Friday nights in college two of my best friends would drink an entire case of beer apiece and didn’t seem to mind the ensuing vomiting. I was the driver and of limited means so my weekend binge only meant a seventy-cent bottle of Gallo Burgundy. Both of these friends, of course, are now dead and I’m still on the lid of earth rather than under, and drinking wine daily.

During a general state of rebellion in my early teens I went to the Baptist church though our family was Congregationalist, a kind of lower-case Episcopalian. I told my dad who was an agriculturalist that the Baptists claimed that in biblical days the wine was simple grape juice. He said, “Bullpoop,” adding that they had been making true wine in the Middle East for four thousand years, and that non-drinkers liked to spread lies about alcohol. He said that when St. Paul maintained, “A little wine for thy stomach’s infirmities,” he was talking about actual wine, not grape juice. Since then it has occurred to me that if Christianity offered a six-ounce glass of solid French red for Communion, churches would be happier and consequently more spiritual places.

In the early seventies during a hokum banquet in Ireland I drank several goblets of mead and was ill for a week with ravaged intestines. The physical mischief caused by bad forms of alcohol is infinite. I have posited the idea, perhaps fact, that heavy beer drinkers must find a type of sexual release in their relentless peeing. One warm day in my favorite saloon in a village near my former cabin in the Upper Peninsula, an old man drank thirty-eight bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon. This is clearly too much, and he just as clearly endangered his body during his dozens of walks to the toilet. This amount comprises twenty-eight pounds of liquids which cannot be retained indefinitely by the human body, thus the walks to the toilet were a necessary peril. Another friend in the area, a huge mixed-blood Chippewa, wasn’t feeling well drinking two fifths of whiskey a day and under my wise counsel reduced it to a single fifth. Last summer in Montana I advised an unruly friend that after a hot day of fishing a quintuple martini might be unwise as the alcohol will shoot through the dehydrated body and land on the brain pan like an ICBM. In the remoter areas of the country my advice is sought whereas on our two dream coasts everyone is smart, albeit petulant, and I am considered a bumpkin. Also a slow study. It took me three years of hard work and unfathomable will power to make a bottle of wine last an hour. Sipping seemed quite unnatural to a mouth disposed toward gulping.

In a lifetime of thousands of visits to country taverns, I have noticed that beer drinking causes fist-fights and wife beating. A French theologian, Michel Braudeau, has suggested that heavy beer drinking cleared the moral way for Germany to begin World War I and World War II. Beer drinking is at the root of the lugubrious sentimentality that makes murder for an idea logical. Conversely, drinking nothing at all is equally dangerous. Try to imagine Washington D.C.’s infamous Beltway as a moral Berlin Wall within which low-rent chiselers concoct wars and other forms of our future suffering. I recently read that there are sixty lobbyists per member of Congress. Think if liquor and beer were forbidden within the Beltway and each day the lobbyists gave each member of Congress a good bottle of French wine. Grace would return quickly to our bruised Republic. I would also like to remind those teetotaler fundamentalist titans, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who are so enamored of political power, that the Catholic Church has maintained its political power nearly two thousand years no doubt because the leaders drink wine. I well remember a group of bulbous priests at a Roman trattoria quite literally pouring down wine. I asked the waiter what they were celebrating and he said enviously that they did it every day. They were drinking Antinori Vipera which is scarcely cheap plonk. Come to think of it, I would gladly contribute to a church that offered a full glass of Côtes du Rhône for Communion.

At a wonderful local Mexican restaurant called Las Vigas, I often begin a meal with a shot of Herradura tequila, a Pacifico beer, and an ample bowl of chicharrones which, of course, are deep-fried intestines, after which I have a plate of machaca and beans (Mexican reconstituted dried beef laden with chiles). I hosted a feast for twenty-five friends last April in this restaurant which included a whole wild pig spit-roasted, giant Guaymas shrimp (eight to a pound), and platters of machaca, Herradura and Pacifico. Wine simply isn’t appropriate for these flavors. We also had a couple of divine mariachi singers who had a dulcet effect on the crowd, singing their melancholy plaints about love and death which neutralized any strident effects of the beer.

Curiously, New York City is the only place on earth where I feel an urgent need for a vodka martini, actually a raving desire. A day of back-to-back insignificant meetings and the sight of thousands of nitwits milling around talking on their cell phones deeply enervates me. My soul becomes splenetic and I need to Taser myself before a pre-dinner nap. A bar next to my hotel on Irving Place is kind enough to serve me a martini for only thirteen dollars, a price at which you can buy four in Montana. In New York City, however, you can hear expensively dressed career people talking about themselves at a speed that will remind you of the old Alvin the Chipmunk phonograph records. You leave the bar in a hurry, thinking that Castro had some good ideas, and take a snooze after planning the evening’s wines.

Life is rarely instructive. One of the wisest and best writers I know, Peter Matthiessen who loves good wine, once said, “I have never learned from experience.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Anyway, a Hollywood studio had put me up in the Hôtel Plaza Athénée for a significant meeting about the fate of a hundred-million-dollar movie. I was stressed and jet-lagged over the nastiness of the business world which is as morally compromised as the literary world, and went into the hotel bar for a double shot of V.O. Canadian whiskey which was forty-two dollars, a tad stiff price-wise. I’m not comfortable in the Plaza Athénée in Paris or The Ritz in my collection of fifty-dollar sport coats. I’ve been easygoing about taking friends out for a seven-hundred-dollar meal but it would be unthinkable to spend that much on an article of clothing. I said to the Plaza Athénée barman, “Are you f—–g kidding” and he poured me a four-dollar glass of Côtes du Rhône saying that it was the solution to all the problems in life.

I rarely feel spiritual in New York or Paris except when I’ve stopped at the old church across the side street from Les Deux Magots on St. Germain and lit candles for the liver of my friend, the renowned gourmand Gerard Oberlé, who caught hepatitis in Egypt and couldn’t drink wine for two years. His suffering was incalculable and on several occasions I lit five bucks’ worth of candles which brought about his recovery.

The other day on a very warm border winter afternoon, I was sitting on the patio with my wife Linda, sharing a bottle of delightful Bouzeron. We were watching a rare pair of hepatic tanagers at the feeder. These birds evidently don’t get hepatitis. It was all very pleasant and I recalled again a passage from the journal of a Kentucky schizophrenic who had escaped from an asylum. He wrote, “Birds are holes in heaven through which a man may pass.” I had this little epiphany that wine could do the same thing if properly used. We all have learned, sometimes painfully, that more is not necessarily better than less. When Baudelaire wrote in his famed “Enivrez-Vous,” “Be always drunk on wine or poetry or virtue,” he likely didn’t mean commode-hugging drunk. Wine can offer oxygen to the spirit, I thought, getting off my deck chair and going into the kitchen to cook some elk steak and dietetic potatoes fried in duck fat, and not incidentally opening a bottle of Domaine Tempier Bandol because I had read a secret bible in France that said to drink red after dark to fight off the night in our souls.

The first of many words to come to mind when I think of the Montanets and their wines is unpretentious. In an era of unfortunate and rampant “luxurization” of Burgundy, here is a family that has achieved enormous success in France, as well as in export markets the world over, yet manages to keep a modest approach in all they do. Value, drinkability, organic farming, and noninterventionist winemaking are the pillars of all their wines. How often are those words associated with Burgundy anymore? We’ve been working with the Montanets for nearly fifteen years now, a partnership that was a no-brainer, given that Bernard Raveneau first taught Jean Montanet the techniques and importance of getting things right in the vineyard before anything comes into the cellar, and it was Marcel Lapierre who showed Jean the splendor and purity of natural winemaking. It has always been and remains a great pleasure to work with Jean and his son Valentin, both of whom are ever smiling, ever optimistic, and quick to joke at their own expense. But don’t be fooled. Their wines—every last one of them—are world-class, serious, and, most important, delicious Burgundies.

The 2014 Bourgogne Vézelay Blanc “Galerne,” from their Montanet-Thoden label, is grown on the ancient limestone soils that put Vézelay on the wine map. That limestone provides a Chablis-like precision, and the local northern wind (Galerne) on this parcel keeps the grapes dry and ripe, giving ample body and character, too. Here’s the perfect representation to show why Vézelay has its own appellation.

Their 2014 Bourgogne Rouge “Champs Cadet” is grown on those same limestone-heavy soils and is all about pure and lively fruit. This is young Pinot at its best: aromatic, expressive, and a true pleasure to drink.

If you enjoy rarities and curiosities, be sure to try the La Cadette 2014 Bourgogne Rouge “L’Ermitage,” a blend of Pinot Noir and César, an ancient varietal that, legend has it, Caesar himself brought from Rome with his conquering armies to Gaul. This rustic and fruity mix is unlike any other red Burgundy out there today. Hail, César!

A meaningful number of the most prestigious (expensive) cuvées of Châteauneuf-du-Pape come from the lieu-dit of La Crau. All of the fruit iused for VT’s classic bottling is sourced from old vines on the plateau of La Crau. What would be a reserve wine or a special cuvée at any other Châteauneuf estate is the minimum standard for VT. La Crau is one of the undisputed grands crus of the appellation.

As many of you know, the special thing about this site is the stones. The stoniness of VT is its most exciting quality, and it is always evident. In riper years it may only become evident after some bottle age.

One of the challenges with this appellation of late is achieving balance and freshness. What the Bruniers have accomplished in 2014 is nothing short of remarkable. (By the way, the same is true at Pallières in Gigondas, and 2014 looks to be this estate’s greatest vintage since the Bruniers purchased the estate with Kermit in 1998.) Vintage 2014 produced a VT of exceptional refinement, with a texture of velvet. Power and finesse, fused into one complete package, with all the character we expect from VT—there is no mistaking those La Crau stones. Vieux Télégraphe is returning to its roots and leading the way forward in Châteauneuf toward drinkable, balanced, terroir-driven, elegantly rustic old-vine Grenache that will redefine and reinvigorate the appellation.

Bouvier is best known for his Marsannay of all three colors, produced where his winery is based and where the lion’s share of his vines are located. Outside of this inheritance, his greatest acquisition ever was this parcel in Morey Saint Denis, a coveted lieu-dit surrounded by grands crus. Every year it is the top wine in his cellar—the strength of this terroir makes its presence felt. This lush, full-fruited, sensual red Burgundy delivers the type of experience that only Pinot Noir from these parts can.

From a great site in the prime saddle of mid-slope land between Gevrey and Morey, Boillot’s Corbeaux is a quintessential Gevrey-Chambertin experience, decidedly old school. Thanks to his partial full-cluster fermentations in open-top cuves and his use of old barrels for aging, nothing ever gets in the way of the expression of each of his terroirs. Les Corbeaux 2013 shows smooth, silky fruit, solid structure, and tannins that are all finesse. This graceful, harmonious wine will give much pleasure young and old.

How do the Chevillons do it? That is, how do they make some of the prettiest, most elegant Burgundies in all the Côte in what most consider one of Burgundy’s most rustic appellations? Fanatical vineyard management, old vines, and a focus on purity of fruit: very few stems, very little new wood, soft, gentle cuvaisons and racking. This 2013 is as seductive a young Nuits as you are likely to encounter. Enjoy over the next five to eight years.

I can’t recall a more inspiring moment in a cellar in Burgundy than when I tasted Franck Follin’s 2012s out of barrel underneath his home in Aloxe-Corton. I have had many great tastings in Burgundy, and I’m not saying this was the best, but I can’t remember one that was better. These are thoroughbred wines: sleek, sinewy, beautifully constructed. This Aloxe-Corton will drink beautifully over twenty years. Follin’s wines are for fans of classically styled, pure, racy red Burgundy. This is what red Burgundy should taste like.

My heart skips a beat every time I contemplate the fact that this is the last vintage of Maume that will resemble what we know as Maume. Indeed, I believe it is the last vintage even labeled with the Maume name. Maume’s collection of ancient vines with their diverse budwood, his rustic and moldy cellars, and his mad-scientist-like personality that came alive between the walls of his Gevrey-Chambertin cave all combined to give us here at KLWM many great memories of some of the most unique Pinot Noir ever made. We stockpiled library vintages in addition to the 2011, Bertrand Maume’s final vintage, but precious little is left. Buy a bottle of Burgundian history that you can drink with pheasant.

There is probably no white grape in the world capable of delivering the aromatic and flavor complexity of Gewurztraminer. It is the wine that winemakers in Alsace are most excited about showing off to their colleagues. Drinking one is almost like having a course unto itself at table, though I certainly enjoyed it at home with eel and avocado sushi recently—what a revelation. This 2012 from Ostertag was harvested just shy of vendange tardive concentration, so don’t expect it to be dry!

This gorgeous Pinot Blanc, one of Félix Meyer’s most ubiquitous cuvées, always manages to capture the perfect blend of exotic fruit and stony freshness that is the hallmark of all of his wines. Félix successfully packs (as usual) a lot of complexity into a very reasonably priced bottle that shows incredible versatility at table. I am always thrilled to find it on a by-the-glass wine list.

A fifty/fifty blend of Muscat Ottonel and Muscat d’Alsace, this is the first Muscat Brand that has been produced at Boxler since the 2008 vintage. It is a truly breathtaking creation. The aromas are pure, soft, and ethereal, with an understated class that comes from the Ottonel. The palate is layered with white fruits, slightly smoky hints, and a heavy dose of granite minerality. Much like his Pinot Blanc Réserve from Brand, it shows its terroir in striking fashion. Dry Muscat doesn’t get any better than this (and, as I discovered with a 1959 the last time I was in the region, it is one of Alsace’s greatest agers).

Let me be frank: Alsace rarely comes to my mind as the solution to the dilemma “What should we drink?” I’m a bit intimidated by the region’s complexity and variety, its many styles of wines and appellations. Yet, when I think back, I cannot remember a single time when an Alsatian bottle (de qualité, bien sûr) was a disappointment and didn’t go delightfully with the food.

So why not reach for Alsace more often? Put it back in its natural place at the top of the wine alphabet. We like to praise a wine region’s versatility, how there’s “something for everyone.” Nowhere is that more true than in Alsace.

2014 GENTIL D’ALSACE • MEYER-FONNÉ >

Clearly, this Gentil is named after the older meaning of the word—noble. And noble it is: Riesling makes up 50% of the 2014, and 25% is Muscat. The nose is elegant and chalky, on a delicate base of rose petals. But it’s the palate of lychees, yellow raspberries, and chamomile that shows the full complexity of this dry, linear wine. You and your guests might forget your noble upbringing and fight over the last pour in the bottle. My solution: buy a case.

$18.00 per bottle $194.40 per case

2014 PINOT BLANC “BARRIQUES”
DOMAINE OSTERTAG >

Pinot Blanc is not considered one of the “noble” varieties in Alsace. Leave it to André Ostertag to give it the royal treatment in homage to its Burgundian origin. Indeed, this cuvée is aged in barrels, allowing the equal blend of Pinot Blanc and Auxerrois to develop unexpected power. The nose is delicately buttery, the palate rich; yellow peach and white flowers lead to a smoky finish.

$26.00 per bottle $280.80 per case

2013 RIESLING GRAND CRU
BRAND “KIRCHBERG” • ALBERT BOXLER >

One whiff of this might make you want to plunge right into the glass. Once the wine hits your tongue . . . Nope, zingy lemon, delicate white flowers, rich mineral backbone, beautiful mouthwatering finish, incredible length . . . (though all true) will not come close to summing up the experience of enjoying this wine. How’s “Buy as much as you can get” for a tasting note? It’s a classic!

As I hope you’ve noticed, we have invested a lot of energy in revitalizing and growing our Italian portfolio over the past few years. It sure has been a lot of fun. We are just getting started, by the way, so please keep paying attention and help us in bringing you the best from this great land of riches!

Many in the wine world express surprise about our company’s roots in Italy. As far back as the 1970s, Kermit was a pioneer in the region, first importing to these shores what are now household names such as Vietti, Aldo Conterno, Cacchiano, and Gini. For whatever reasons—maybe the quality of the wine and cooking in Provence, Kermit’s home there, and his well-traveled circle of influence from Collioure in the west up to Beaune in the north and (most especially) up and down the Rhône River—KLWM developed a real focus on and expertise in French wine. Still, we never stopped importing Italian wine, and our love of the country, its people, its history and culture, and, of course, its incredible food and wine brought us back with a vengeance during the past decade.

As the New Year gets under way, here are a dozen great reasons to get better acquainted with our Italian selections. Let one of our salespeople help you unlock all of Italia’s glory with a personalized tour of our entire portfolio. Give us a call anytime. Salute!

Selling the ten cases we import per year of this wine may take more work than selling several thousand cases of Sancerre, but it continues to be totally worth it. For every person I introduce to the joys of Roussanne grown on the limestone scree slopes of the Savoyarde, his or her life will be more complete. This bottling is from the Quenards’ finest hillside parcel, fermented and aged in large oak foudres, and released a year after their other whites. Alpine freshness meets Mediterranean charm in an inimitable rendering of this lovely grape.

Among the Quenard family’s many qualities, their mastery of the intriguing Mondeuse grape is one that I celebrate. Related to Refosco of northern Italy, Mondeuse from Savoie makes a medium-bodied, sleek, pleasantly structured, and peppery wine that is delicious and versatile. I enjoyed a mighty tasty bottle of their 2007 a few weeks ago; you don’t have to age it, but you certainly can. They’ve produced this bottling for years, aged in oak foudres like the Grand Rebossan Roussanne above. It is an imposing presence, with a delicate touch: the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove.

Arbin is another village farther around and higher up the mountain from the Quenards’ home base in Chignin. A vintner they knew there who had worked his old vines by hand for decades was nearing retirement, so they paid him a visit a few years ago and earned the honor of continuing to work his land. High on the limestone slopes and pruned in the gobelet style of the Beaujolais (see the label), these beautifully gnarled old vines eke out a wine with much more finesse and delicacy than the Mondeuse from Chignin. Volnay to Pommard. Terres Brunes is a gorgeous effort from the Quenards, a steal for the price, and a welcome addition to their stable of fine alpine wines.

Bordeaux is back on the rise after years of being shunned by sommeliers and other wine enthusiasts in favor of the novel, obscure, and often downright weird. Is it possible to be classic and trendy at the same time? Gombaude-Guillot, our beloved organic Pomerol grower, proves that it is not only possible but also truly exciting for all walks of the wine world. With incredible depth, power, and fine but grippingly youthful tannins, this is unmistakably Pomerol—in the style on which this great appellation built its reputation. Yet its rich, velvety texture and vivid fruit, suggesting blackberry and plum with an almost wild intensity, are certain to appeal to classically trained palates and thrill-seeking youths alike. Already approachable, the 2012 will improve for twenty years or more.

An importer of Italian wines, I have now and again found myself on the Italian wine route in need of some shut-eye. I try to pick nice places to relax instead of the more convenient autostrada hotels. Quality of life, that’s my motto. Occasionally I’ll wind up in Venice, a rather picturesque site if a little worse for wear and tear in certain quarters—evidently the sea is lapping away at its very foundations.

Heed my advice: my favorite visits to Venice have coincided with dreadful weather. One winter the lagoon was frozen, believe it or not, and the temperature enough below to freeze one’s nose off—good-bye, wine-tasting career! However, it was fabulous, because two pals and I had Venice almost to ourselves: empty canals, streets, hotels, and at one of Venice’s impossible-to-get-a-table restaurants, we were the only diners.

Then this past October, my wife and I encountered rain and high tides that flooded much of the town. It was still crowded, but bearable, everyone by necessity wearing knee-high rubber or plastic boots. Along with the art and scenery, we discovered a thriving food and wine scene. In case you go, that’s why I’m writing about it.

Most tourist-ridden sites worldwide are now geared toward the low airfare/tour bus/cruise ship crowds. Crowds, as in crowded. You walk the street one slow-motion step at a time, and even that is jarringly halted, because half the mob is stopping every two steps to take a selfie.

Hey, Mom, it’s me on the Rialto Bridge!

Oops, sorry, Mom, the press of the mob just pushed me over the railing.

The quality of the food sinks to mediocre and worse. The cooks must be thinking that they’ll never see a customer again, so why take any pains. Near Bandol, where Gail and I live several months of the year, we always cook at home now, because there is not one single restaurant we want to go back to. I had a terrible visit to Rome recently, a place I dearly loved: streets mobbed, tourists eating cheap, restaurants with no soul. And the Amalfi Coast. Yikes. Good luck. Best go in the winter, because the summer is torture despite the glorious landscape. Traffic jammed for miles, tourism become their sole income—bah, humbug!

But that’s not all. Cheap travel is great for égalité, but the result is the destruction of everything that attracts us in the first place, including the local cuisine. When égalité means mediocrity for one/mediocrity for all . . . well, there must be a better way.

Normally I explore and eat around a lot, but I liked a couple of restaurants in Venice so much, I would advise you to return again and again.

Trattoria Antiche Carampane is so off the beaten track, I almost gave up. I walked using Google Maps. Venetian alleys and streets make Google a blithering idiot. Countless times I found myself going in circles—swearing in circles, too.

It was worth it! Service with a smile, interesting collection of diners, unpretentious setting, superb selection of northern Italian whites (including Duline’s Malvasia Istriana), one delicious platter after another, mostly seafood, all local. They passed out a free starter, a paper cone filled with peanut-sized crispy fried shrimps, perfectly cooked. Every note seemed to hit just the right pitch. I wish I lived next door.

My second fave rave: Alle Testiere on Calle del Mondo Novo. I’m sorry, but you can’t imagine how good warm, grilled white polenta tastes next to a cool ball of the best, least creamy baccalà of my life (baccalà is Italy’s brandade de morue). It is so delicious you might order it as your second and third courses, too, because when your plate is empty, you’ll experience a feeling akin to heartbreak. Luca is the perfect host and also author of the short, gem-filled wine list. When the lagoon was frozen, he’s the one who served me and my pals Duline’s Pinot Grigio—rare, expensive, fairly priced, hard to beat. Thank you, Luca, for that first, startling taste. At Testiere you should order both the cheese and the dessert courses, because they’re so good.

Pardon the digression, but I am convinced that Italian cheeses are now better, generally, than French. Same with charcuterie. The French and their bureaucratic fervor have dulled down both, waving the health flag as justification. Yes, both cheese and charcuterie are safely sterile nowadays, and (is it a coincidence?) produced by factories instead of small farmers. When it comes to food and wine—sorry, Big Brother—artisanal wins, and I’ll bet it is better for us, too.

Back to Luca at Alle Testiere—he gave me the address of a teensy wine bar near the Venice market. “Go to Al Merca,” he said. “Their wines by the glass are beautifully selected. I don’t know how they come up with them.” They also have delicious Venetian-style sandwiches. Alert: no chairs, no tables, no roof. I went three times, and now it’s my favorite Venetian snack bar.

Remember, seek out the periods when Venice weather is inclement and make sure it is not a school vacation week in Europe before making your plans. And, oh yes, reserve those restaurant tables way in advance.

American wine drinkers have come a long way in the past forty years. It may be difficult to recall—many of us were not even born, and perhaps we subconsciously blocked this dark age from our memories—but there was once a time, in this dearly beloved country of ours, when the average consumer would turn his nose up at the idea of drinking a rosé. Not macho, some said. And that’s not all: it took many years for us to embrace the virtues of good Beaujolais, or to even acknowledge anything other than a Bordeaux or a Burgundy—let alone an oxidative Jura Savagnin.

Progress is in our country’s DNA, and we cannot keep living in the past. That’s right: the time has come for us, as a nation, to start drinking rosé year-round. Our friends in Bandol would scoff at the idea of confining the most versatile and quaffable of wines to the summer months, and rightly so. Why deprive oneself of what is undoubtedly among life’s greatest pleasures?

We’ve put together a couple samplers for you as a reminder that rosé season is as perennial as evergreens and San Francisco fog. So in the name of progress, refreshment, and of course, joy…we urge you to heed this call to arms, by raising your glass of rosé to the sky and joining us in our year-long quest for pleasure, no matter what color it may come in.

Today we visit theAlps to discover a fascinating tradition of viticulture and winemaking. Grape growing has long held a sacred place in these mountain cultures, often as a necessary means of sustenance, since little else will grow in the poor, rocky soils that dominate. Beyond providing a livelihood to Alpine farmers, the wines in this sampler—produced along the rim of the French and Italian Alps—demonstrate that these terroirs, defined by high altitude and steep, rugged slopes, are capable of yielding remarkable wines of unique character.

Conditions are extreme: winters are harsh, summers can be very dry, and the intense daytime sun is matched only by often-frigid nighttime temperatures. Given the potential for violent storms, grape growers—as well as vines themselves—must be cold-hardy and resilient.

What does an Alpine wine taste like? This sampler will offer you an idea via whites and reds from Savoie, Valle d’Aosta, and Alto Adige. Expect vibrant acidities, vivid aromatics, a certain “mountain structure,” and minerals galore. Enjoy a discount on this sampler and savor your journey through these breathtaking mountains.

The Brunier brothers bottle this white Châteauneuf as a more accessible alternative to the exalted La Crau bottling. La Roquète is a completely different terroir—its sandy soils lend a softer edge to the Clairette, Grenache Blanc, and Roussanne that make up the blend. Suggestive of molten rocks with a trace of honey and wildflowers, it can age but really aims to please in its tender youth.

Serge Férigoule of Sang des Cailloux is the quintessential Provençal vigneron: his jovial, singing accent; generous, laid-back disposition; and silver handlebar mustache could come right out of a Marcel Pagnol film. His wines, accordingly, are a picture-perfect depiction of his home region, loaded with aromas of Provence and plenty of southern soul. This old-vines bottling is all about smoky garrigue, dense black fruit, taut leather, chewy tannins, and stones. It will provide an authentic Vacqueyras experience for many years.

Nève is a fantastic, albeit little-known, terroir of Côte Rôtie. Located in the north of Ampuis on the lower part of the slope, its soils consist of decomposed red schist. It has an extraordinary capacity to display an intensely seductive nose—complex and full of refinement. There is always an ethereal quality.

Louis works exclusively with Serine, the ancient clone of Syrah known for low yields and a lovely aroma of violets. It ferments wild, stems and all, then the wine ages fifteen months in neutral barrels before an unfined and unfiltered bottling. The finesse here, along with its smoky, peppery, floral nuances, will resonate strongly with enthusiasts of traditionally crafted northern Rhône Syrahs.

Kermit and I have had many discussions about the current state of affairs in Vouvray. Where are all the great wines? This once-thriving region of scores of masterful vintners seems very quiet these days. One wine stands pretty tall and proud to us: the Champalou family’s single-vineyard masterpiece, Le Portail. Planted on a chalk plateau right outside of their home and winery, the vines are pampered daily. The wine is aged in older demi-muids, does its malolactic fermentation, and is bottled without filtration. Many used to be made this way; almost none are today. This dry Chenin Blanc combines unctuous texture with chalky minerality and nervy acidity to create one hell of a classy package. Delicious now, it will continue to provide pleasure for more than a decade.

Happy birthday dear Lulu, happy birthday to you. Ninety-eight years young and still warming so many of our hearts with the twinkle in your eyes—I wonder if you know how influential your positive attitude is to us lucky enough to have encountered you on our travels along life’s sometimes rocky road. You are to some, an educator, and your class is titled How To Enjoy Life. Well, I wonder, could there be any lesson more important than that? A big hug from me, Gail, Anthony, Marley, and all the staff at KLWM.AND YOU, dear staff, dear clients, should you have some birthday thoughts or memories for Domaine Tempier’s Lulu Peyraud, please, please, pretty please, send them along to us in English or French. We’ll translate if necessary and post them and of course make sure Lulu receives them. Simply leave a comment at the bottom of this post.And any of you with a bottle of Domaine Tempier around the house, Dec. 11 is a good day for pulling a cork and raising your glass to the unforgettable, irresistible, irrepressible Lulu Peyraud.

An expedition to the Beaujolais last summer found the KLWM gang in fine form. Not only were the vignerons excited about the grand potential of the upcoming 2015 harvest, but also they reveled in the outcome of their 2014s, a vintage that began with some question marks but has finally yielded one delicious answer. Many among them described the resulting wines as très Beaujolais: that is, dominated by buoyant aromas of bright fruit, agile on the palate, and eminently drinkable. This month we feature three new arrivals from two of Morgon’s most reputable producers—be sure to satisfy your deepest Beaujolais desires before we are all sold out.

P’tit Max, as he is known, works some of Morgon’s highest-altitude vineyards, so much so that he harvests almost two weeks later than the average for the appellation. The word ethereal always comes to mind when tasting his wines, perhaps due to the cool microclimate that ensures lifting acidity year after year. He is also blessed with some very old vines, many of which are more than 120 years old. This age may explain the wine’s impressive structure, a granite constitution that provides a foundation for all the lively fruit mentioned above. It finishes with a mouthful of spices and a touch of funk—the kind that will make you want to get up and dance like James Brown.

Mathieu Lapierre’s Morgon is just in! Beaujolais addicts around the country can breathe a collective sigh of relief—just call the store today to get your fix. Each vial contains a healthy dose of the finest fermented Gamay from the decomposed granite soils of Morgon. Our staff found the 2014 especially slippery, and by that I mean it has a tendency to slide right down your gullet no matter how hard you try to stop it. Silky and perfumed, with no rough edges, this is dangerously swallowable.

From vines over one hundred years old on Morgon’s splendid Côte du Py, this cuvée spéciale reinforces everything we love about Beaujolais while simultaneously shattering all the usual preconceptions about Gamay. The texture is pure velvet, to the point that you may forget about swallowing, it feels so good to swish it around over your palate. There is substance, flesh, serious density yet it is delivered with total finesse, seductiveness, even sexiness. While some might argue the price is high for a simple Gamay, I would counter that it is just right for a world-class wine that will entice and inspire for many years to come.